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There's cruel kills and there are quick kills. Salting a slug directly is not cruel. It kills it relatively quickly. The picture would lead the slug to a slow torturous death - Slowly damaging itself as it touches the walls of salt as it sought for an exit.

Similarly, I would squash a spider, but I wouldn't slowly pulls its legs apart and then [insert some kind of slow painful death method for a spider here]...because that would be cruel. Just kill the damn thing quickly if you have no choice but to kill it.

(honestly y'all should just man up, get a napkin, and free the eight legged creature outside.)

And here's my point. If you're going to get all upset over a picture of a slug in a salt maze (may I remind you without proof that said photographer actually forced the slug to run the maze) you need to take a second to realize that if you find a slug in your garden you often kill it because it's eating your plants... and I don't know if you know this but you can't just squish it... Like the scale of killing this slug is that similar to burning ants with a magnifying glass. I just feel like it's almost ridiculous how many people got angry at this image.

Hardly anyone kills for fun... However if you have to kill a pest as a form of pest control who are you to condemn others for enjoying their work? Or for taking pleasure in the removal of something that irritates them.

Should we mourn the loss of a rat as if it were a deep personal loss? Of course not - wild rats spread disease and we kill them to protect our communities.

I undersand your point of veiw but i find it so self righteous and backwards that it becomes ridiculous and logically removed from the most basic consequences of life. Death is a part of life and you should accept this instead of lecturing people with your frankly impossible rhetoric - you have killed insects there is no doubt in my mind however you simply did not notice it.

Did you know that if deer are not culled they will multiply and strip the land of all freshly growing plant shoots - the implication here should be obvious. Just because some people hunt deer for fun does not mean it is not necessary. In the UK fox hunting was banned as a crul sport and now we have urban foxes that are no longer shy of human contact - children have been mauled as a direct result of people like you who interpert the 'hunt' as cruel and inhumane. It is simply necessary and shame on you for condemning others who take pleasure in protecting our way of life. This is civilisation and you would not survive without it.

They seem pretty anti-imposing-torturous-death-upon-living-things-ish. It kind of bothers me in this example, though, as it's to the point of suppressing the absolute hilarity of this picture's setup. It's like morally disagreeable things can't be funny, and it's bullshit. If I got captured serving in the army and some motherfuckers videotaped me getting tortured and decapitated, and I farted at the end, I hope somewhere there's a person with the balls to laugh at it.

Upvotes for this guy. Even though torture would totally cancel out the humor that fart would ever have... I'm just saying I feel like there's some hypocrisy existing. Like if you feel like this picture is terrible you better be a fucking vegan or you're full of shit. And don't tell me "Ohh we need the meat for sustenance" because there are much easier non-animal-slaughtering ways of getting protein.

I feel this is a false dichotomy. Just because I'm not a vegan doesn't mean I want the animals I eat to be tortured.

And let me add that while I understand that factory farming can be cruel, if I know that they're being actively tortured in some way I would try to find an alternative source or purchase from stores that have more humane methods.

But overall I do agree that there are easier ways of getting protein and I've been trying to reduce my overall meat consumption. Since last year I've been eating like a vegan every other day. And hopefully more as time goes on.

seriously though it's a bad maze. I like to think the slug would make it out because he never has to choose an exit. He can the circular path he's on until he approaches a stop and has to enter the next outer circle. In other words it's just a simple spiral.

I'm wondering why people are so outraged by this. What qualifies a slug as an organism that deserves so much respect? It has a very rudimentary nervous system and probably experiences no apprehension or fear at its imminent death due to dehydration. I'd love to hear some explanations about what organisms shouldn't be treated this way - how about unicellular ones? What makes the slug special? And how is this image any different from the common killing of slugs by throwing salt on them, this is just deriving a little entertainment from the act.

I'll bite. As social beings, humans empathize with more than just other humans -- even simple creatures and inanimate objects. Needlessly killing things, even simple things, seems cruel. Doing it in an unusual way, such as a salt maze for a helpless slug, only seems more cruel.

That is a good explanation as to why people are outraged, thanks.
I still feel that expressing empathy towards inanimate objects or other things should be a matter of personal choice, and if someone enjoys making a salt maze they should be allowed to.

I like to think the maze was created in the hopes that the slug would succeed. But I agree, considering a slug as something that deserves special consideration seems arbitrary especially when held against most peoples stances towards mosquito's, mice, spiders and livestock.

Much of the disgust stems from exactly what you wrote last. It's not necessarily the act of killing, it's the fact that someone enjoys doing it. Enjoys the suffering.

That you don't see the issue with this is an issue in itself. Continuing on, where do you draw the line of what type of organisms are okay to torture and what kinds are not? Do you think that slug doesn't feel the pain? Its nerve endings have the same effect yours do. Would it be okay if I put you in a maze and shot you every time you didn't go the right way? Why not? Seriously, what is your reasoning? The only difference is you are speaking for yourself. What if someone came along that was 40 ft. tall and didn't give a fuck about your "feelings"? Started ripping your arms off because your screams were funny?

Thanks for insulting me when I was just asking for an explanation - it really elevates reddit as an intellectual community.

Slugs have nerves that carry action potentials - but no equivalent to our central processing center, the cerebral cortex. There are hundreds of labs studying nerve excitation - would you outlaw any experiment that involves the excitation of a pain receptor in vitro? How about an experiment on an in vitro reflex arc - pain with a compensatory reaction? Taking pleasure in watching a nerve undergo an action potential certainly does not make one maladjusted.

In my opinion, creatures that have some form of self-awareness should be unequivocally exempt from these acts. Slugs almost certainly do not meet this criteria.

What if someone came along that was 40 ft. tall and didn't give a fuck about your "feelings"? Started ripping your arms off because your screams were funny?

I think you've anthropomorphized the slug a bit more than it deserves. Slugs do not have anything that you would call a feeling. They do not fear future pain such as in a situation with a giant threatening to kill them, and they aren't psychologically scarred by the repeated application of pain, any more than your bicep is scarred every time you hit the gym because you will be tearing it and causing it pain.

Have you ever ripped blades of grass out of the ground for fun, maybe to whistle with? Plants detect such injuries through chemical signaling and work to close any wounds created. Please elaborate how this is different from the slug scenario.

Suppose some otherwise normal people find it cathartic to pull blades of grass, doing good to these higher organisms. Is this wrong? Why is it wrong in the case of making a salt maze for a slug, as a joke, instead of just simply sprinkling salt on it? Have you never taken satisfaction in killing a mosquito that was previously drawing your blood?

I'd love to hear your rational retort.

And do I love to torture slugs? No. Never even seen one. Yet, my instinct is that there is nothing wrong with this image. However, since everyone seems to express an indignation, I wanted to clarify exactly why this is wrong, not get talked down to.

Could you supply the source of information regarding slugs inability to form memories?

I don't agree with the anthropomorphization claim. It could easily be your underestimation and appreciation for less complex life. They might not have feelings and even if they did, it's the express of intent where the wrongness comes.

When make the comparison between plant and slugs, the feeling of wrongness is greater in the sense that we can relate more to them(slugs) than with plants. It would be the equivalent of burning a boxed plant whenever it grew too close to the light. Wouldn't be nearly as heart-breaking but sad and depressing to watch.

Don't You think it's a little egoistic to end a life of another living organism, just because it annoys you? The same with inducing suffering to another living organism just because you find it entertaining?

It's the intention that bothers runswithcoyotes and me, lesser the act.

People are so fucking selective with their morality. This thread is full of bleeding hearts on high horses whining about how this is an incredibly cruel thing to do, to kill a slug like this. Like there's some good, kind way to kill things.

Fact is that slugs are gross. They slime everything, they eat your garden, and why is this one in the house anyways? So people kill them by the dozen. Lure em with beer that they drown in, like it's nothing. Salt them, squish them, whatever. And no one gives a shit because they are pests. But now this, THIS is immoral. Unlike all that other stuff.

It's like people flip their shit out when someone burns a couple ants with a magnifying glass, but no one bats an eye if you wipe out the entire colony with any manner of deadly poisons.

I'm not saying "people should be more comfortable with killing things", or the opposite even, but rather that we all need to look at our double standards and figured out why this bothers us so much more than the other things, instead of condemning it and moving on.

I think this is probably perceived as more immoral to some of us because it's seen as toying with a creature -- potentially (or perhaps definitely, I don't know) causing pain or death for the apparent purpose not of defending one's garden plants or even relieving a feeling of disgust, but for entertainment. It's not necessarily the killing that's, on average, most alarming, but the apparent sadism.

i realize it sounds irrational, but i do believe that that's the way its working psychologically, yes. i would also contend that this is a pretty evolutionarily adaptive way for a socially oriented and dependent organism to react, even in today's society: it's probably very useful for us to be able to take advantage of other species for pragmatic reasons, but it's less likely to be beneficial for us to accept or sanction such activities when they have less concrete benefits. especially if we assume that discouraging cruelty and encouraging empathy towards other species might create trends that transfer to the realm of human-human interaction even ever so slightly. that seems plausible if the way it works is to decrease the status of those deemed cruel or sadistic via shaming or punishment or downvotes.

My basement has a thing for attracting masses of slugs. When night, while having a gin and tonic and playing some COD, I decided to test the merits of the idea that slugs love alcohol. I dipped my finger in the drink and dropped a single drop on one of the slugs. It instantly started steering towards where I had my drink, and would follow it every time I moved it (after giving it another drop). Eventually, it was completely hammered, going 'sluggishly' to it's sides and in circles. 30 mins later, it was fine.

The shitty thing about this maze is that if the slug touches a "wall," it sticks to him and even if he turns, it will sting and burn and be awful.

There was once a huge slug on some lettuce I had and it was in the sink and I didn't know what to do with it, so I salted it. That was one of the worst feelings in my life. I didn't know how to end its suffering and kill it without exploding it. I sprayed it with water and wrapped it in a lettuce leaf and threw it out. It's haunted me ever since.

In my defense, I wasn't in double-digits yet, I was washing lettuce for my mama. Still. :[